There are a wide variety of types of dyes which are water-immiscible. A major advantage of water-immiscible dyes is that such dyes tend to be permanent, at least with respect to exposure to water. A disadvantage of such dyes is that they require organic solvent carriers, such as xylene, which are problematic from a health and environmental standpoint.
The present invention is directed to compositions of water-immiscible dyes which form stable dispersions in aqueous media and therefor provide the permanence of water-immiscible dyes without the accompanying disadvantage of containing substantial amounts of harmful organic solvent carriers.
For many industrial applications, such as for forming inks, high dye loadings are required. Dye solutions typically must be formulated with a variety of additional ingredients which dilute the coloring effect of the dye; hence, the need for high dye loading. Furthermore, the solvent used to dissolve the dye may not be desirably used at a high level in the formulation. Accordingly, it is a further object of the invention that the water-reducible dye solutions have high dye loadings.